


Square One

by calrissian18



Series: Teen Wolf Coda [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Based on the Events of 3x20, Coda, Episode Related, Jealous Derek, M/M, Mention of Malia/Stiles, Nogitsune Stiles, Non-Consensual Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 18:03:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Stiles was currently being possessed by a psychotic fox, Derek decided to let him have this one.</p><p> </p><p>3.20 Coda - I'm just not questioning these things anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square One

**Author's Note:**

> YES! Another 3B Coda. This makes numero dos (plus a spoiler!fic in between that doesn't _really_ count), I love being ~~attacked~~ inspired by the eps like this. I know a lot of people had issues with things and whatever and *waves hands* I just don't care about any of that because I had _this_ going on in my brain instead. My brain is so much better than your snarly brains. How do you even live with those things? Basically, if you're looking for any sort of commentary here, I am _so_ not the girl for it but I'll squee with you over Sterek-y things that didn't actually happen if you like. *g*

There was a confidence the nogitsune walked with, a purpose to every movement, that was so at odds with Stiles’ normal flailing, rambling motion.  Derek knew before he was even within the range of regular human eyesight that their time had run out.  They were supposed to have another two days.

Stiles ambled down the steps quickly, neck tilted at an odd angle as the thing inside him took stock of its surroundings, zipping up his hoodie as though those were its hands and it used them regularly.  The gate was open and Stiles turned left at the entryway without hesitating.  He had a destination in mind.

It was only once Derek got close that he could smell the sex, cloying desperation and saliva on his skin.  Something soured in his gut and his steps faltered.

Stiles rounded on him, mouth wide with a smile, skin pale and eyes bruised.  He clicked his tongue.  “I gotta admit, I expected the wacky wolf with the red eyes and the heart of gold.  Scott just so badly wants to  _fix him_ , doesn’t he?” he asked mockingly, laughing and digging his fingertips into his own chest.  “Besides, I kind of thought I’d dealt with you already.  You and Chris Argent are meant to be sharing a cell somewhere if I recall correctly.”  The look on Stiles’ face said there wasn’t a chance he didn’t.

“I was needed elsewhere,” Derek said simply, with a head tilt designed to infuriate.  A werewolf couldn’t exactly be hemmed in with handcuffs unless they consented to be.  And Derek no longer did.

Stiles’ eyes glittered, curious,  _elated_.

Derek swallowed.  He hadn’t wanted to see it, what a suit made out of Stiles’ skin would look like.  He’d been right to avoid it as long as he had.  It wasn’t an image he was ever going to be able to get out of his head.  He smirked a little, knowing how to look unaffected and above things that had the potential to  _break_.  He’d been perfecting the expression for over a decade.  “Guess I shouldn’t have hurried,” he said, a bit of cockiness and maybe even approval in his tone.  In truth, he felt slightly sickened.

Stiles’ grin widened.  That good-natured face made inhuman with just the twitch of a muscle.  Derek couldn’t believe how  _separate_  it was.  It was Stiles’ face but there was no Stiles  _in him_.  He didn’t even look like the same person.  The nogitsune took a few steps closer, staring down at the toes of Stiles’ sneakers, like it was counting the spaces between them, or maybe avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.  It looked up at Derek through Stiles’ lashes.  “Not now the deed is done,” he agreed easily.  “But you would’ve liked to have headed that off, wouldn’t you?”

It was a shot in the dark.  Derek could read it in the calculating back-and-forth of Stiles’ warm brown eyes.  It didn’t  _know_  what Derek’s connection to Stiles was, didn’t understand it.  It was just firing randomly.

Derek raised his eyebrows, challenging.  “Was he even the one who made the decision?”

There was a pause, a moment of searching.  Stiles’ chin lifted and then drifted off to the side, lowering.  It’d found whatever response it’d wanted in Stiles’ head.  “Oh right,” Stiles said, eyes giddy.  “Derek Hale, king of consent issues.” 

Derek let the comment slide off him.  It was what he’d suspected would be coming.  Stiles had revealed what he knew after Jennifer, yelled it in Derek’s face in the hospital, and Derek had expected it would be one of the first things used against him if the nogitsune got its chance.  It was going to go after the information that would cause the most pain, have the most unpredictable reaction – the most  _chaotic_  response.  But Derek was a man used to being attacked and this was child’s play, too obvious, too easy.  He bared his teeth in a smile.

The nogitsune wasn’t deterred.  Another few steps, watching Stiles’ feet close the distance as though gauging how close was too close.  Again, looking up at him through lashes that were too long to be real.  “You want it to’ve been me behind the wheel, don’t you?”  Derek fought not to react.  He did want that,  _believed_  that.  Because Stiles wouldn’t.  He was better than that.  He wouldn’t— “It wasn’t.”

Derek stiffened at the blunt delivery. 

The nogitsune smiled with the lower half of Stiles’ face.  It wasn’t a guess now.  Derek had given up the game and it smirked because it knew it.  Stiles tilted his head, licked his lower lip and Derek was momentarily distracted by the shine.  “It was him,” Stiles spread out his arms on either side in showy fashion, “and how he _jumped_  at the chance.”  He stepped up closer, not watching his feet this time but instead keeping his eyes fixed on Derek’s face.  “She was still…” he squinted, searching for the word that would cut deepest.  His eyes widened, “wild, you know, buzzing with that kind of energy that humans just can’t tap into.  They’re too domesticated for it, I suspect.”  He stared at Derek like he was trying to impress the sentiment.  He grinned.  “Hell, he barely even had her name down before he fucked her.  Threw himself at the first person to offer.  I’m guessing some deep-seated self esteem problems are lurking somewhere in this disorganized head of his.”  It tapped Stiles’ long fingers against his chin and perked his eyebrows.  “You?”

Derek’s stomach roiled unpleasantly.  He was picturing it.  The words had been descriptive – undoubtedly purposeful – and the image they painted, of Stiles spreading some girl’s thighs, of him losing himself in her.  Derek didn’t want it.

A hand smoothed over his neck while he was distracted, before he’d even tracked the movement, and the nogitsune twisted his head around and stole a kiss with Stiles’ lips.  Derek shoved it off by hip and shoulder, hard, not caring if it might bruise the skin it was in.  He’d had enough of being the boy who was used for his body.  He wasn’t going to be that for Stiles.  He wasn’t going to be that for anyone.

He could still feel the stroke of tongue against his upper lip, the slot of another mouth fitting against his.  He was breathing harder than the moment warranted.  “Don’t,” he snarled.

That face, a face he trusted, smirked.  “You pulled me closer,” Stiles’ voice hissed and Derek’s fingers flexed at his side.  “For a split second there, you pulled me into you,” he needled.

Derek had.  It’d been instinct.  His hand had come up to frame Stiles’ hip, fingers digging into his back and _tugging_  before his mind caught up to his instinct and he was rotating his hand, using the heel of his palm to find the jut of his hip and push him off.  It was  _literally_  a split second.  If Stiles had been… Stiles, it might’ve even gone unnoticed.

The nogitsune watched him with a smug set to Stiles’ mouth and leaned in to walk two fingers up Derek’s chest.  Derek resisted the urge to break them, reminding himself that this was Stiles even if it looked nothing like him.  “Why, Derek,” he said, sly, goading, “is there a reason you’ve been keeping your distance?  Something you were afraid I’d notice?”  He hit the last two words hard, consonants going sharp.

The hand dropped down when Derek jerked forward into the nogitsune’s space, trying to intimidate it into backing up.  Fingers fell to the top of his pants and the other hand rounded his hip, threatening to move towards the catch of his jeans.

Derek grasped Stiles’ wrists in a painful grip and forcefully removed them.  “Get your hands off me,” he snarled, staring into light brown eyes that were dark with something that came from the inside.  Derek’s gaze tracked Stiles’ face and he said, scrutinizing, “He had more time than this.”

The smirk was back.  “True,” Stiles agreed, pressing his wrists further into Derek’s hold rather than pulling  _away_.  Derek let him go in disgust, “he did.  Until he let me in.”

It hadn’t felt like a lie.  Derek knew not to trust the beat of its heart but he still trusted his own gut.  Not a lie.  But it couldn’t be the truth either.  “He wouldn’t,” Derek snapped.

“He did,” it argued.  “For  _her_.  To spare her.”  The nogitsune threw Stiles’ head back and laughed, soft and sure.  It pinned Derek with familiar amber eyes.  “Do you think he would have done the same for you?” it asked quietly, insistently.  That was one of those questions, simple in its inception but growing claws and fangs and tearing deeper the longer you sat with it.  It struck a nerve, that a girl Stiles had known for five minutes might mean more to him than Derek ever would.  The nogitsune leaned in close, close enough that Derek could feel Stiles’ exhalations against his neck.  “He doesn’t ever think of you,” it whispered cruelly into his skin.

Derek took advantage of the moment, pried the needle out of his jacket pocket and jabbed it into the prominent vein sticking out in Stiles’ neck.

The nogitsune crumpled instantly and Derek allowed himself a moment to breathe.

Scott said Stiles never remembered exactly what he did, sometimes there was intuition or gut feelings that couldn’t be explained, but never  _memory_.  The nogitsune may know but Stiles wouldn’t.  At least not any more than he already did. 

Derek knelt down next to him, shook him by the shoulder.  Stiles’ eyelids fluttered and Derek hauled him up by the front of his shirt.

Stiles stumbled but managed to stay upright, looking at Derek through bloodshot eyes.  He blinked twice.  “Derek?”  Confusion was threaded through the word.  Confusion and maybe a bit of hope that Derek wasn’t going to let himself read into.  Stiles licked his lower lip and looked back through the gate at Eichen House, swallowing hard.  “What happened?” he asked, fighting to get the words out.  His gaze swung back around to Derek, wide and pleading.  “What did I—What did I  _do_?”

Derek grunted, grabbing Stiles’ collar up in one hand and leading him forcefully back towards the powder blue Jeep in the parking lot.  “Nothing,” he said gruffly.  He opened the passenger side door and shoved Stiles in, staring at the visible, spiderwebbing veins that were spreading out from the site of the injection.  Deaton had said that would happen, said it was good.  “We need to get you to Deaton.  The effects of the poison weaken every time it’s used.”

Stiles stopped just shy of getting in the car, turning around to stare at Derek with wide eyes.  “M-Morrell,” he forced out.  “How—How did I get out?”  His shoulders shook a little, like he’d caught a chill, and he looked back at the mental institution like he suspected it might try to drag him back within its walls.  “She said she’d finish me if I slipped under again.  How did I get past her?”  Derek watched him carefully, assessing, trying to determine how much was safe to share and what was better left unknown.  “Derek?” Stiles prompted, panic seeming to claw its way up his throat.

Derek finished pushing him into the car.  “She won’t touch you,” he growled, deciding that was the only part of that that needed addressing.  He didn’t know what connection Deaton had to the woman but if she was planning to kill Stiles then she wasn’t someone they needed on their side.  He got into the driver’s seat, carefully turning Stiles’ key so the thing would actually start.  Derek had watched him do this once or twice, through indifferent or dying eyes.  There was some sort of system and Derek didn’t have the five minutes to spare trying to luck into it again.  The engine roared to life at the first, gentle attempt and Derek sat back, relieved.  The scent that had been on the nogitsune was a thousand times stronger with Stiles behind it.  Derek’s lip raised and he glanced at Stiles out of his periphery.  “The same can’t be said for everyone,” he added distastefully, and against his better judgment.

Stiles snorted, unamused and half-hearted.  He stared down at where his hands were upturned in his lap.  “Judge me for that, fine,” he said, dispassionate.  He laughed, ran a hand through his hair, and Derek reversed out of the space.  “You know, I’ve got an expiration date that’s rapidly approaching and my last days are getting progressively shittier.  Judge me for wanting one moment where I was anchored in  _true_ ,” he hit the word hard, trying to amp up its meaning so Derek really  _got it_ , “reality, where I wasn’t standing idly by and watching my mind fall away around me, where I not only knew where I started but where I ended too.  Judge me for all of that, do what you have to do, man.”  He shrugged, furious but restrained.

He didn’t speak again, not until they were pulling into the parking lot of the animal clinic.  He waited until the engine was idling but not off to say quietly into the rumbling sound, “It’s not like  _you_ were around.”  The words were clearly meant to have the ability to be lost.  They both knew Derek would hear them, but if he wanted to pretend otherwise, Stiles had picked a moment, a volume, that would allow for that.  “You were on the other side of the planet, the other side of town, the other side of the room, always  _just_  out of reach,” Stiles said with a sardonic smile.

Derek cut the engine off and leaned back slowly.  He swallowed, staring at the peeling leather of the steering wheel.  “After you were—After,” he bit down on the word.  His eyes pinched.  “I didn’t want it to know.”

He could hear the gulp Stiles took.  “So there’s something to know?” he asked, unassuming, hopeful.

It was a low blow because Stiles already  _knew_.  They _both_  knew and they’d purposefully not addressed it.  It hadn’t just been Derek who was shying away from this.  They both had, and now Stiles was pinning it all on him, making it seem like Derek had been the only one who was being stubborn about this, making him be the one to give voice to it.  Since Stiles was currently being possessed by a psychotic fox, Derek decided to let him have this one.

He leaned across the console, grabbed Stiles by his shirtfront and found the fit of their mouths again.  Derek hadn’t let himself focus on how perfectly and effortlessly their lips seemed to align when the nogitsune had been behind them, but – to his surprise – it felt right to have Stiles like this.  He was still sixteen but there was a scent on him that itched at Derek’s skin, a scent that Derek wanted to bury.  But it was a scent one would expect to find on a teenager, stupidity and desperation and sex.  In a way, it belonged and Derek didn’t.

He could never decide what exactly he wanted when it came to Stiles.  To be with him but also to never be in the same room as him.  And he hadn’t ever wanted Stiles’ first time, but he also hadn’t wanted anyone else to have it either.

He slid his fingers up into Stiles’ hair, wondering if  _she_  had done this, too.  Where she had touched him and how Derek could touch him better to make him forget.  He kissed Stiles slowly, licking into his mouth, wanting to savor this moment in case it never came again.

Stiles’ hands rose up between them and he pushed at Derek’s chest, shoving him away.  “Don’t,” he said breathlessly.  He shook his head a little and Derek felt something in him  _blacken_.  “Don’t do this now,” Stiles croaked.  He licked his lip and all Derek could think about was the taste of it, the feel of it between his own, and how desperately he wanted it back.  Stiles’ smile wobbled and he looked up at Derek with eyes that were his and lashes that framed them and seriousness in every inch of him.  “I don’t want this to be a last ditch effort before the end.”  He ran a hand through his hair, huffed.  “I don’t want you to be something to  _go out on_ , Derek.  One last hurrah before the lights go out.”

Derek didn’t know where this was going but his throat felt tight.

Stiles scooted forward in his seat, closer to Derek, and found Derek’s hand.  He closed his own around the back of it, fingers digging into the side of Derek’s palm and thumb wrapped around the swoop between Derek’s thumb and forefinger.  Both their hands were sweaty.  “When— _when_ ,” he reiterated more forcefully, not a doubt in his mind that Derek would do it, “you get this thing out of me, when I’m… better, you’re going to be the  _start_  of something,” he said simply.

Derek’s lips twitched up.  He was never the guy who promised a new beginning, but he wanted to be. 

For Stiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I told you, my lovely [hale raisers](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/), that I had coda feels and that I would have fic by morning. I totally (sometimes) stick to my word!


End file.
